Son of Godzilla (1967)

Son of Godzilla (1967)

Plot Summary

A group of scientists are on tropical Solgel Island in the Pacific to conduct weather control experiments. Just before they begin, they find giant preying mantises measuring 25 feet tall called Kamakaras. They decide to go ahead with the experiments, but a malfunction in one of the devices and as a result a radioactive storm that pushes the temperature up to two hundred degrees. The storm also causes the mantises to grow even bigger to 100 feet tall. The mantises then make their way to a huge mound where they uncover a giant egg which contains a young Godzilla, later named Minilla. Eventually, Godzilla shows up and saves his offspring. The rest of the movie features Godzilla taking care of and teaching his young son the skills that will eventually help him to become the new "King of Monsters" as well as fighting the Kamakaras and a giant spider named Kumonga

Well I have to admit when i'm wrong as this wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. This is Godzilla on a shoestring budget as it was sold directly for TV distribution. The tone has pretty much changed from a general audience type film series to one that caters more toward the kiddie fare though it's not insulting to adult audiences just yet. As you can see by the DVD cover art there that Godzilla has been toned down to the point where he looks pretty silly and Minilla is pretty goofy himself though that leads to a certain charm when it comes to the lighthearted comedic approach they take to him.

The acting in this flick is quite good across the board and I really liked the work of  Tadao Takashima as the head scientist. I thought he brought a seriousness to the role that was a good balance to some of the silliness going on. The setup of bringing in the second billed actor (and probably the lead character) in Goro played by Akira Kubo is pretty silly as he jumps out of a plane and more or less forces himself onto the scientific team as he's a journalist following the scent of a hot story. The big scientific experiment taking place on the island is weather manipulation in order to freeze/cool down the weather to the point that humanity can cultivate unusable land (such as the Sahara desert) so that food can be produced there in light of the population limit of the Earth. I found that particularly interesting in retrospect because the Earth's population has increased exponentially since then and the threat of food shortage is very real. I wonder if the scientific community was really mulling this back then or if it was some gobbledy gook cooked up for the movie.

I will say one thing for this flick, the monsters are pretty well done. I really liked the look of the mantises and the giant spider Kumonga was quite stunning. The fight scenes between Godzilla and the Mantises were pretty good though the spider stuff was hampered a bit by Minilla being involved. Speaking of Minilla he was played mostly for laughs with the most memorable bit being him learning how to do the fire breath. At first all he could get out were circular smoke rings! Big G helped him out in teaching him how to do it by stomping his tail! The relationship between Godzilla and his offspring was very good and it led to one of the more heart rending endings of any Godzilla movie which I won't give away but let's just say that despite being besieged by monsters all over the place the scientists use their knowledge to escape.

Considering the budgetary restrictions and the direction the series was starting to go into I have to say this is about **.